Duplex Read online

“Bummer,” said Ryan.

  “Well, you are the scariest micropotent we’ve had so far, Ryan. The only one whose power includes astonishing violence.”

  “It sure astonished me,” said Ryan.

  “I’m pretty scary, too,” said Bizzy, feigning umbrage.

  “Scary in a different way, but yes,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “She’s got thermonuclear beauty,” said Ryan.

  “How many megatons do you think glamor-face delivers?” asked Bizzy.

  Dr. Withunga laughed. “Oh, come now, beauty isn’t measured in nuclear terms. The measure of Bizzy’s glamor-face is at least one full Helen.”

  “Helen?” asked Ryan.

  “Helen of Troy. Referred to as ‘the face that launched a thousand ships.’ Therefore, a milli-Helen is officially enough beauty to launch one ship.”

  Bizzy hooted with laughter. “And a micro-Helen?” she asked.

  “I think that after the milli-Helen, we start moving toward faces that sink ships, and those are measured in Bags, not Helens.”

  “Oh come on,” said Ryan.

  “Ordinary ugly people are one-baggers—they can only safely go out in public with a bag over their head,” said Dr. Withunga. “A two-bagger means one bag over the ugly person’s head, and then another bag over your own head as insurance in case the ugly person’s bag breaks or blows off.”

  Ryan and Bizzy both laughed, though Bizzy said, “Cruel.”

  “You don’t ever say it to somebody’s face, because that would be unkind,” said Dr. Withunga. “Besides, most people keep in mind that in someone else’s view, they themselves might be a one- or two-bagger.”

  “Not Bizzy,” said Ryan.

  “I would say that Bizzy’s normal face is around four milli-Helens,” said Dr. Withunga, “which gives her a decent shot at being in a magazine ad. But that glamor-face—I’m not sure if a full Helen really covers it. After all, Paris was able to run away with her and make it all the way to Troy without anybody killing him to get to her.”

  “Are we really discussing these milli-Helens as if they were a meaningful unit of measure?” asked Bizzy.

  “I did a paper in sociology class as an undergrad, about deliberately ridiculous systems of measurement. You should google ‘FFF system’—that’s three ‘F’s’—and remember that there really are computer geeks who carry out some serious measurements in, for instance, ‘furlongs per fortnight.’”

  “That’s very slow,” said Ryan.

  “Let’s see if I can remember this. The speed of light comes out as, like, one-point-eight-oh-something times ten to the twelfth furlongs per fortnight, or one-point-eight-something megafurlongs per microfortnight.”

  Ryan hooted.

  Bizzy said, “I guess computer geeks had to do something back in the days when programs were on punch cards and they had to sit around three hours waiting for their programs to compile.”

  “FFF?” asked Ryan.

  “Furlongs, of course, fortnights, and—”

  “Fathoms?” asked Ryan.

  “No, fathoms are just six feet of water, and a furlong is one-eighth of a mile. Both lengths. A furlong is supposedly how long an ox can pull a plow through a furrow without stopping to rest. An acre is an area one furlong in length and four rods wide, which is sixty-six new feet wide.”

  “New feet?” asked Ryan.

  “Look it up, Ryan,” said Dr. Withunga. “I wrote a paper about it, but I didn’t memorize it. The English foot used to be about ten percent longer than it is now, so when they changed to our current shorter foot back in the thirteen-hundreds, they didn’t change the furlong or the rod, they just added more feet to make up the distance.”

  “You’ve done a very good job of distracting Ryan from all his worries,” said Bizzy.

  “How about you?” asked Dr. Withunga. “Have I distracted you at all?”

  “Oh, Ryan was my main worry, so yes, you’ve eased my worries by distracting him from his.”

  “How am I your main worry?” Ryan asked her.

  “As your official punca,” said Bizzy, “it’s my job to keep you contented.”

  “There are so many overtones to that word,” said Ryan, “that I’m not sure it actually applies. Let’s stick with girlfriend.”

  “But in America,” said Bizzy, “the job of the girlfriend is to keep you guessing and lead you around by the nose until you lose all your guy friends and barely have any testosterone in your system.”

  “Where did you get that?” asked Dr. Withunga.

  “Observation,” said Bizzy and Ryan simultaneously. They all laughed.

  But apart from that it was mostly silence from Ryan, and girl talk—woman talk?—in the front seat. Ryan was surprised to learn that Bizzy was completely competent with woman talk that consisted of information acquired from People magazine and various celebrity-oriented websites and clickbait sources. The English royal family came up more than once, and both women seemed to be on a first-name basis with all the royals.

  Ryan’s eyes glazed over whenever he tried to listen. Someday I’ll be married to an actual woman, he thought. Maybe Bizzy herself. Am I going to have to be able to take part in conversations like this?

  As they got into Danville, Dr. Withunga began to talk about the work they were there to do. “Of course I keep a list of all the micropowers I know of, whether the micropotent is in one of our GRUT groups or not. But for our purposes—trying to keep Mrs. Horvat from being punished as a witch—we need to try to imagine a way to turn at least some of these micropowers into defensive weapons.”

  Ryan said, “I think the first thing we have to face is the biggest problem. These loveks aren’t just hunting down Mrs. Horvat. If we confront them with a house full of micropots, they’re going to think they just hit the witchcraft jackpot.”

  “Mother doesn’t want anyone else in jeopardy. She hates it bad enough that I’m at risk because they know about her.”

  “The powers of micropotents do increase in the presence of at least a few others, so if all we did was increase your mom’s powers, Bizzy, somebody else would have to be there.”

  “Do you mean that because Bizzy is present whenever her mom punishes her with the you’re-so-pretty curse, Bizzy is making her mother’s curse stronger?”

  “Probably,” said Dr. Withunga. “And didn’t you tell me that the last time that happened, you were there, too, Ryan?”

  “Oh, great,” said Ryan. “I made it worse.”

  Bizzy laughed. “Come on, Ryan. You make everything better.”

  “Good try, punca,” said Ryan.

  “No, I was being a girlfriend right then.”

  “I think it’s only right to separate the two issues. First, find out what might be weaponized. Whoever has a micropower like that, they’ll need to work on it, to try and hone it. The way Bizzy learned to do her plain-face.”

  “No, I’ve got an ugly-face now,” said Bizzy. “It’s a weird combination of a couple of traits from glamor-face and a couple from plain-face. It looks like a really strange Halloween mask.”

  “Please don’t demonstrate,” said Ryan.

  “Dr. Withunga,” said Bizzy, “I don’t want to demonstrate glamor-face in front of this group. Too many people have already seen it. I want to do ugly-face, and make the transition in front of them. They’ll see I’m really a micropotent.”

  “They’ll take my word for it,” said Dr. Withunga. “You don’t have to demonstrate anything.”

  “Glamor-face makes some other girls feel homicidal. Or suicidal,” said Ryan.

  “So she should show them ugly-face to help them feel better about themselves?” said Dr. Withunga. “You just don’t know how depressed girls think, Ryan. They see ugly-face, and they’ll probably say to themselves, yes, that’s exactly how everybody sees me.”

  “Really
?” said Ryan.

  “Insane boys think God finally got the guy-design right when he made them. But crazy girls think God ran out of good parts and made them out of scrap.”

  “I don’t think you’re being fair to depressed guys,” said Ryan. “We can hate ourselves every bit as much as depressed girls.”

  “Maybe,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “I get depressed sometimes,” said Bizzy, “but I’m not crazy enough to have body image problems.”

  “So nobody’s ever told you that you were fat?” asked Ryan.

  “Not funny,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “She knows she isn’t,” said Ryan.

  “Nobody knows any such thing,” said Dr. Withunga. “Teasing a slender girl about being fat might make her hate how skinny she is, especially if other people laugh at your ‘joke.’”

  “Nobody has a sense of humor anymore,” said Ryan.

  “Jokes like that were never funny,” said Dr. Withunga. “Not to the people being mocked. Oh, sorry, I meant ‘being teased in a good-natured way.’”

  Ryan felt as if he had just failed about three tests, but he still followed them into the school. There were no kids at all. Ryan asked about that.

  “No classes today,” said Dr. Withunga. “It was a teacher workday.”

  She had a roll of masking tape and four signs. She knew right where she wanted them. Each one said “GRUT” with an arrow pointing down a hall, except the last one, which just said “GRUT.” She put it on the door and led Ryan and Bizzy inside.

  They were the first ones there, and Ryan and Bizzy helped set up chairs in rows like a regular lecture class. “Not a circle?” Ryan asked.

  “Too many. A circle for everybody who said they’d come would make it so you had to shout at the people on the opposite side.”

  “Rows work?” asked Bizzy.

  “I’ve been working on GRUT for more than a decade now. I find that the people who stick with GRUT are very helpful and cooperative, no matter how I configure the chairs. And most twelve-step meetings use rows—I think because a lot of people are terrified to sit anywhere but the back row when they’re new to a group.”

  It made a kind of sense to Ryan, though it would also have made sense if they had made three concentric circles of chairs. Though rows were way easier to line up evenly.

  When the chairs were set up, Ryan and Bizzy sat down together and held hands. Dr. Withunga made a face. “Come on,” she said. “You can’t keep from touching each other for the duration of a meeting?”

  “Since we made our mutual confession of undying love,” said Bizzy, “we haven’t actually tried not touching each other at every opportunity.”

  “Well, thanks for confining it to hand-holding,” said Dr. Withunga.

  Since hand-holding was all they had ever done except for a few kisses, Ryan let go of Bizzy’s hand easily. “Dr. Withunga,” said Ryan, “I’m so nervous now. Would you hold my hand?”

  “Shut up,” said Dr. Withunga cheerfully.

  It turned out that the first person to arrive was Mitch—spider-boy. When Ryan looked surprised, Mitch laughed. “I live in Lynchburg. It’s about as far for me to come to Charlottesville as to come here, so who cares?”

  “Have you figured out how to weaponize spiders?”

  “It depends on how creeped out a person is to have spiders on them,” said Mitch. “And how big the local spiders happen to be.”

  “Can you make the spiders bite?”

  “Spiders don’t regard humans as prey. But if you start slapping spiders, they can get scared and take protective action. Unfortunately, hardly any spiders are able to inject humans with any kind of venom.”

  “Just wondered,” said Ryan.

  “Considering that you put bees in your mouth,” Mitch said.

  “Not as a matter of habit,” said Ryan. “And if it had been a tarantula in her hair, I’m afraid Bizzy would have been on her own.”

  But imagining Bizzy with a huge hairy spider made Ryan feel a powerful impulse to do exactly what he had done with the bee, combing it out of her hair with his fingers. But in his instantaneous imaginary plan, the spider ended up on the ground with a big stomping foot on top of it.

  I can imagine my way into seeing what I would do. Could do. Should do? That was a good thing to understand about his own micropower.

  Meanwhile, Bizzy was shuddering. “What’s the protocol for having a massive hairy spider on you. ‘Stop, drop, and roll’?”

  “I think it’s ‘screech, dance around, and pee yourself,’” said Mitch.

  Dr. Withunga joined in. “And you know that because . . .”

  Ryan and Bizzy both cried triumphantly, “Observation!”

  Mitch laughed.

  Pretty soon, though, the room began filling up. People who knew each other gathered together, and Dr. Withunga nodded to each new arrival and called some by name. A couple of them came up and handed her an envelope. Probably not packed with cash, thought Ryan; Dr. Withunga almost certainly was not using this GRUT thing as a front for dealing.

  He was embarrassed that the thought even crossed his mind.

  Finally it was time for the meeting to begin, though Dr. Withunga assured Ryan and Bizzy that quite a few would probably straggle in late.

  “Nobody’s late,” said Bizzy, “if they show up at all.”

  “Most of you don’t know a couple of new members. This is Ryan, whose micropower is falling in love way too easily . . .”

  That got some laughter, including from Ryan.

  “And this is Bizzy, spelled with an ‘I,’ two ‘Z’s,’ and a ‘Y.’”

  “What’s her micropower?” somebody asked.

  Dr. Withunga answered with a chuckle, “Not important for our purposes here, because it’s her mother who’s—”

  A gasp from several of the GRUT members caused Dr. Withunga and Ryan to turn and look at Bizzy. Bizzy’s face was in mid-transition to ugly-face, and Bizzy had been right. It was way more disturbing than the transition to plain-face.

  “Don’t keep doing that,” somebody called out, “or your face will stick like that.”

  Bizzy grinned and her face snapped back to normal. For a split second, Ryan was afraid it would revert all the way back to glamor-face, but no, Bizzy had it under control.

  “I have an idea of all of your micropowers,” said Dr. Withunga, “but I don’t know where all of you are in working on them. For instance, Tay, you were trying to get beyond guessing passwords.”

  “Pretty good at names,” said Tay. “About half the time.”

  “Guessing them?” asked Bizzy. “What do you start with?”

  “Their face. Race. Age. Culture.” Tay shrugged. “I know how people name their kids in my culture. I’m not as good with whites and I suck at Asians, but I’m getting better with practice.”

  “Not sure how to turn that into a defensive weapon,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “I was just thinking,” said Bizzy. “My mom usually only curses people who are alone with her. There’s no ambiguity about who she’s talking to. So if she’s talking to a crowd, it gets diluted and pretty much nothing happens. But if she knows a name, says the name, then she can direct it to an individual.”

  “Okay, that might be useful,” said Dr. Withunga.

  Tay shrugged. “What kind of curse? Maybe I don’t want her to know my name.”

  “She won’t curse you,” said Bizzy. “She’s usually careful who she hits with a whammy.”

  Ryan had a vague idea that “whammy” was a term from some ancient comic strip. Surely they didn’t have American comics in Slovenia. But why not? They had Star Wars and Friends.

  “I loosen bricks,” said one kid. “But I have to be so close to the bricks that if a wall comes down, it’s usually on top of me.”

  “Dangerous,” said Dr. Withun
ga, “unless you can refine your micropower to a point where you can do it from twenty feet away.”

  “No bricks in the duplex,” said Ryan.

  “Still, we’ll keep it in mind, because if you can loosen bricks, then, maybe stones? Maybe nails or screws?”

  “Worth a shot,” said the kid.

  And so it went, people offering their micropower and other people chiming in with ideas on how to weaponize it. Some of them also told about the micropower of someone who wasn’t actually there. “I can’t think of any way that Linda’s ability to detect the ripeness of fruit could be weaponized.”

  Ryan laughed. “Well, if it comes to a food fight, she’d be ideal. She could pick the most splattable fruit.”

  Ryan half expected Dr. Withunga to tell him to get serious, but when she explained the rules for good brainstorming at the beginning, she made a huge point of how even jokes could trigger a good idea in someone else, so the one thing you were forbidden to do was imply that somebody’s idea was dumb or useless. Even when it was.

  “Can Linda make fruit get riper?” asked Bizzy.

  Linda’s friend cocked his head. “I don’t know if she’s tried. For all I know, that’s what she really does all the time, maybe without even knowing it. I’ve just seen her hold up a canteloupe or a honeydew and say, ‘Found a ripe one.’ She’s always right.”

  “Does she hire herself out for grocery shopping?” asked Bizzy.

  Aaron Withunga was there, in the back, as usual. Must have arrived late, because Ryan hadn’t noticed him come in. “There are a few people who are maybe too shy to speak up,” said Aaron.

  “That’s their privilege,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “I know,” said Aaron. “But some micropowers are kind of weird to talk about, so I won’t name any names, but let me just put some micropowers out there, and if somebody wants to claim it, fine. If not, fine.”

  “Aaron never tells,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “He tells you,” said somebody.

  “No,” said Dr. Withunga. “Not if the person asks him not to.”

  “Go ahead and tell us some micropowers, then,” said Ryan. As if he had any authority here.

  “We’ve got one person who can unfasten things. Not door locks. So far, it’s only stuff on cloth. They discovered their power because they could make snaps unsnap from a few feet away. Sort of a practical joke. But recently, with practice, buttons will pop off. And hooks and eyes will slide open.”